The brightest parts
by TheOneTrueBear
Summary: "Would he enjoy her now? With her light dimmed, tainted by the darkness she released. The darkness held in check now only by her ever stubborn will." After switching her humanity back on Caroline looks for answers in NOLA
1. Chapter 1

**A/N I am aware I should be updating Scent of Hope and I do have the next chapter of that almost ready. I just got a bit blocked on that one and this story has been knocking on the inside of my skull. So i thought I'd write the bugger and get it out of the way. It's pretty much finished so updates on this will come thick and fast**

She stumbles blindly through the days, a feeling of constant shivering, like flu, prickling over he body. She practices iron hard self control, tells Stefan that any chance for them is gone, she has nothing now but her control and love, love is losing control.

It is a hollow sort of victory over the beast she is, as emotionless in its own way as she was before. Is this what she has become now? A hardened shell of herself, of the daughter her mother had loved so much.

She can do this she tells herself. She's strong.

"You're strong, you're beautiful, you're full of light" his words come back to her, his voice preserved perfectly in the amber of her mind, like the mosquito, beautiful and ancient and gone.

Gone and lost to the past, like her light. Where is that now?

She mustn't think of him, must shut him out as she has shut out Stefan. It should be so much easier, she has love for Stefan, a friendship that has sustained them both since the day she turned, a hope of something more that she has quashed despite her mother's whispered wish.

But it is he that invades, persistent and intrusive as always. "I enjoy you"

Would he enjoy her now? With her light dimmed, tainted by the darkness she released, the darkness held in check now only by her ever stubborn will.

She wonders if she would she enjoy him too now she is so darkened, and scolds her self for such dishonesty, she has always enjoyed him. She thinks back to a time when it was Elena who's switch had been flipped. "All those dirty thoughts you have about Klaus" she will never forget that sneering jibe from the pretty mouth of the kindest person she's ever met.

How right Elena had been, how hard she'd had to battle every day with those filthy tempting thoughts of him. His lips had always starred she can still picture perfectly the way he pursed them when he was angry or amused, so sexy, so expressive.

She'd told herself a thousand times she was indifferent to his body, he wasn't nearly as well built as Matt or Tyler. He, after all, could never be mistaken for a quarter back. And yet, oh God and yet, the way he moved, the lean lines of him, sinewy and predatory, had always made it nearly impossible to draw her eyes away from his slight frame.

But it had been his eyes, his ever changing, angry, playful, wounded eyes that she could never quite shake from her thoughts. True they hadn't Damon's stunning blueness, or Stefan's soulful depths but he could use those murky blue green eyes to devastating effect.

The way he'd rolled them or flashed then up in annoyance. The way they twinkled and teased and moved over her with unabashed desire. The way they'd sometimes filled with water just enough to hint at the humanity she'd always been searching for in him.

"This is because of Klaus, because I saw the good in Klaus" she remembers how she'd snapped when she'd finally had enough of Tyler judging her tryst with Klaus in the forest.

To this day she still doesn't know what possessed her. She can't believe she's going there again, now when it shouldn't matter at all. But her mind is spiraling away, out of control, towards that day again.

She'd thrown herself into his arms and what had been her excuse. "He was there and he obviously wanted to kiss me". She's actually glad in retrospect that had been Katherine she'd been peddling that crap too rather than her own dear friend.

It hadn't been that, it had ben the opportunity she'd been waiting for since the moment she'd realized he wanted her. "and I will never come back, I promise" his lips had twitched into a tiny smile and she'd taken that promise as all the excuse she needed to finally get a taste of the forbidden

And hadn't it been everything she'd ever fantasised? A filthy fantastic revelation, his eyes had glinted as he'd pushed her up against the tree and literally ripped off her clothes. He'd been a man on a mission. A mission to make that one time count, to make sure that even an immortal like her would never forget it.

She never will. She will always carry every touch, every look, every word with her from that day.

"I want your confession"

"…the darkest parts of yourself that care for me"

She hits pause on spiraling recollection

"Because I saw the good in Klaus"

"the darkest parts of yourself"

She gets in her car and she drives


	2. Chapter 2

She's here because she has to know, has to know if she's right. If seeing him can really give her the answers she's desperately looking for.

"Well, well, well" He leans over the balustrade of the top level of his mansion's courtyard and greets her with a smugness that is just pleased enough to be endearing. "What brings you to fair New Orleans then love?"

He vamps to her so fast she's not sure if he took the stairs or leapt the balustrade, either way he's right in front of her looking up at her through his lashes and smiling mischievously.

She smiles, back she never could resist him when he's impish like this. "I came to see you actually" she says it as haughtily as she can to compensate for the admission of surrender he might take it as.

"Well then sweetheart" he throws an arm presumptuously around her shoulder, making it just casual enough, leaving just enough distance between them that she can't protest without seeming petty. "We better get some champagne"

"Not our thing Klaus" she snarks half-heartedly as she goes willingly with him up the stairs.

He hands her a glass and she walks around the elegant room to look out of the window at the bustling city below.

"So" he comes to stand beside her and admire the view. "Why are you here then love?"

"My mom died," she says simply and turns her head a little to look at him.

His eyes close, briefly shutting out the city. "I'm sorry to hear that sweetheart. Are you alright?"

"I turned it off," she tells him. "My humanity," she explains, as if it needed clarification. "I couldn't take it, it hurt too much, and I thought I would still be in control you know?"

"But you weren't" he says still looking out of the window. It's not a question.

She turns to fully face him. "No, I wasn't, I really wasn't." she scrubs her face, fights to control her voice, the ever present press of tears, the tremble in her lip. "I did some terrible things."

"Ah love" his hand twitches like he's considering touching her but he doesn't, he opts instead for rolling the stem of his glass between his fingers and thumb. "We've all done terrible things"

She nods, how true that is. "I know. But I can't stop thinking about it. About how I was so calculating and dark, I feel like I'm still dark"

He cocks his head in a vaguely lupine way, inquisitive and watchful. "And so you come to me, because?"

"Because you were wrong. In the forest" she feels her self blush even to mention it, loses the thread of her sentence to the flushed flustered feeling burning her cheeks and quickening her pulse.

"How's that then?" he prompts letting her blushes pass without comment.

"When you said it was the darkest parts of me cared for you, you were so wrong"

He waits as she picks at her nails and tries to get her thoughts straight

"It was the brightest. That girl who could see the good in everyone, God, even in you" she shakes her head almost in disbelief that she could ever have been that way. "That was the best person I've ever been"

He does touch her now as her voice chokes up with strangled emotion. Places his hand rigidly on her back in a gesture of comfort that is too awkward to offer anything like solace and yet the warmth of him, burning through her blouse, relaxes her tangled mind and she can force out her deepest fear. "I don't think I'll ever be that girl again"

"Sweetheart" he whispers without pause. "You'll always be that girl, a light like yours isn't so easily extinguished"

Her face tightens and she shakes her head, she can't bring herself to believe him not when she feels so lost and empty.

"Listen" he says when it's clear she has no response. "Life is pain and our lives are long and beset with loss. Most vampires will do it, every now and then"

"Most?" she hears what he does not say. "But not you?"

"Well" he breezes and makes a dismissive gesture with his empty glass. "It's not for all of us"

"So you've thought about suicide but not flipping the switch?" she asks a little baffled and when he narrows his eyes in surprise, she scoffs. "You think I forgot anything from the night of my boyfriend's bite almost killed me? You said you'd thought about it?"

"Well the two aren't exactly alike now are they?" he moves away from her to retrieve the champagne and she feels a frigid loss spreading out from the point where his hand had lain. So she follows those few short steps and stands close to him in the too big space of the room.

He fills her glass and when he turns away a little to set the bottle down her eyes linger on the lines of his neck. Her breath catches and when he turns to find her staring she looks awkwardly away.

"Not the same?" she prompts once she's swallowed hard enough to trust her voice.

"If you flip the switch there will eventually be consequences, actions that must be lived with, losses that must be borne," he sips his drink and she drops her eyes rather than allow herself to watch this lips touch the glass or the movement of his throat as he swallows, she knows how easily he distracts her physically and she wants a clear mind to hear what he has to say. "Death on the other hand is release, it ends your pain, your doubts, your obligations."

"Obligations?" she takes a second to work him out. "Your family?" they are, after all, the only thing over the years to which he has held allegiance.

He shrugs, clearly not comfortable with the turn the conversation has taken. He is so screwed up, desperately looking for understanding but pathologically incapable of opening himself up to anyone.

"If you flipped it you might have hurt them or not protected them, Rebekah or Elijah, you might have lost them." Her heart folds in on itself painfully, she couldn't bear her mother's loss for an hour after they buried her and he has suffered for a thousand years without respite because he would do nothing less for his family.

Her body moves with the flow of compassion and her fingers come to his cheek to trace that sharp bone structure and drop through his stubble and tenderly across his lips. She's losing control, all she has is her control and it's slipping from her.

She told Stefan no, told him there could be nothing between them while she held fast to her self. And here she is spiraling away from herself into the draw of his face, his eyes, his ever-tempting lips. He kisses her fingertips lightly and watches her with clear knowing eyes.

"What?" she asks when his lips twitch beneath her fingers into the barest hint of a smile.

He laughs, it's a rich soothing sound that makes her tilt her head and frown, what can be so smoothly, gently funny. "Well love" his fingers take their turn to reach across the distance between them and catch a glistening curl in a miniature tango swirling in the corner of her eye. "There's your answer then isn't it"

 **A/N there are things a bear likes you know. This particular bear likes cake, cake and feedback. Both of those things. Feel free to feed the bear**


	3. Chapter 3

_"_ _Well love" his fingers take their turn to reach across the distance between them and catch a glistening curl in a miniature tango swirling in the corner of her eye. "There's your answer then isn't it"_

"What?" she repeats dumbly. He sees something she does not as he watches her with ancient knowing eyes and she feels every one of his thousand years stand in stark contrast to her bewildered naivety.

She should be nothing to him who has lived so long she thinks. He has quite literally watched empires rise and fall. How many great men has he met, how many great women have passed through his heart over the centuries? And she. She is a small town girl turned small town vampire with no clue what she's doing and so little fortitude she flipped the switch at the first tragic event in her immortality.

"You hear that I have never turned off my humanity and what do you see? Hmmm" his hand moves from the curl at her temple deeper into her hair and she's aware that the moment is intimate in a way she's never been with him before, even when she'd opened her legs for him amongst the ferns and fallen leaves she hadn't been this tantalizingly close to him. "Do you see the heartless monster who has never regretted the terrible things he's done enough to trouble his non-existent conscience or the loyal brother resolutely bearing his own suffering for the sake of his family?"

She leans into his touch and her own hand finds it's way unbidden to his waist. "Which is it?" she asks softly

"It doesn't matter Caroline" he moves a fraction closer and she imagines sparks leaping across the inches between their bodies. "What matters is that you saw the latter. Just as you always would have. You will always see the good in me, it is simply who you are."

She lets out a long shuddering sigh, relieved to have come, to have found her answer in him just as she had hoped when she'd got in her car back in Whitmore. She is still that girl, somehow, beneath her regret and sorrow he still sees that light filled girl. Her head falls forward a little as she releases all the fear and insecurity that have kept her spine rigid for weeks and he leans forward to kiss her forehead.

"And I promise" he says against her skin. "To always see the light in you"

She moves closer, fills the inches between them with her own body and his arms go around her, cocooning her in the inevitability of them. "I intend to be your last" he'd said and even then, before the forest and before the missing him she's denied even to herself, she'd accepted the truth of it. She hadn't scoffed or protested or fled, she'd just smiled her uneasy understanding that, yes that is how it would be, one day.

"I missed you" she admits without meaning to speak and yet without regretting letting that truth slip from her mouth straight through his chest, where her head lies, and into his heart.

"As I missed you" he speaks into her hair and holds her close for a moment before drawing a deep breath and speaking again. "Are you ready then love?"

She shakes her head against his shirt. "No" she whispers. "Not yet"

His disappointment radiates through his skin and into hers and she tightens her arms around him. "Can I stay?" she mumbles and lifts her head to look at him again. "Just for tonight?"

"Of course" he takes her chin in his hand and looks searchingly into her face. Whatever he was looking for he must have found because he slowly, brutally mercilessly slowly, leans in and lays his lips over hers. It's a gentle kiss, closed lipped and chaste and her heart thunders in her ears at the feel of it. He moves away and her hands rise to catch his head and bring him back to her.

She looses her control, the control she had hinged the rebuilding of her life upon, she simply unshackles it and kisses him. He's half a heart beat behind her and she's already pushed her tongue into his mouth before his hands make their way to her upper arms to pull her hard against his body. He feels so damn good and his kisses send emotions swirling in her heart as random and unpredictable as a tornado. There is no control here, no reason or logic, but there is emotion, so much humanity, in this crazy lust filled surrender.

She pushes him back, his light body conceding easily as she sends them stumbling backwards and down onto the couch. "Klaus" she gasps breathlessly as he pulls her into his lap. "Please"

She is begging him for so much more that sex, she's begging him to show her the light he sees in her, begging him to stir her humanity to panting sweating chaos in his arms. "Hush sweetheart," he reprimands her between kisses, his hands still trailing hungrily over her body as his lips following his words to her ear. "No need for that

Perhaps not, perhaps with him she need not beg for love but she doesn't care. She wants it so badly right now that she'll throw her tattered soul before his feet and hope, despite all that she knows him to be, that he will not trample it into the dirt. His kisses, his hands, his adoring eyes when he breaks away gasping to look at her, tell her he will not. He will gather it up and return it to her a little more mended every time.

His hands find the skin beneath her blouse and hers grasp blindly at his shirt tugging directionlessly at it in mute demand that it be gone. He strips it off himself and her blouse follows so that she can plaster her skin against his and feel every burning inch of contact ignite the loving insanity that wanting him has always been.

"God, Caroline," he breathes desperately into her mouth and his hands move erratically over her body. She likes that he doesn't have moves. Oh she's not saying that a millennium of experience hasn't paid off, that he's not an incredible lover, but it's not a consciously honed skill with him. He's just as lost in it as she is, just as instinctive. She remembers Damon's touch, the practiced consummate smugness of it, the enjoyment he derived in undoing her had been enjoyment of his own skill, his own power, and not of her pleasure.

Klaus pleases her for her own sake. In the forest he'd held her high against the oak tree, her back scraping the bark, her legs draped over his shoulders as he'd worked her with his mouth until she'd been keening and thrashing. And when he'd slid her body, limp with pleasure, back to the floor still shuddering with aftershocks of her orgasm he'd beamed so boyishly and stroked her hair with such tenderness that she'd had to fight the rising bubbling feeling in her heart.

He strips off her bra and kisses her breasts roughly and it feels so good she mewls and jerks against him arching her back to push herself harder into his mouth. "Fuck" she hisses as his hand slips inside her jeans.

She reaches for his belt, rips it from him and tosses it aside, focuses on getting him naked. She's aching and empty for him in body and soul. She came here so his faith in her could fill up her empty spirit but now she's in his arms her spirit can wait its her body she needs him to take care of. "Klaus." The pleading tone is gone and she's as commanding as the queen he sees her as. His compliance is immediate, in a flash of vampiric speed that blurs even her supernatural vision they're both naked and he's above her, his mouth possessively claiming hers. She breaks the kiss with a gasp and throws back her head in anticipation of the moment, that wonderful soul-filling coming together that a split second later she realises isn't happening.

Opening her eyes she finds herself staring into those heartbreaking chameleon eyes of his, so much power, so much self-doubt. She always has pitied him a little no matter how much they all feared him, he just sucks so hard at getting the love he craves. She thinks of him through a thousand years, striving and clawing for love then self destructing over and over again and her heart always does cry a little for him.

He's scared; she knows that no matter how well he hides it. Scared of her, of loving her and her not loving him, of trusting and being betrayed. Disappointment and unworthiness have been hammered into him for centuries and he's done everything wrong, absolutely everything, but she doesn't care because he stirs her compassion and she just wants to drive that doubt from his eyes.

So cups his face in one hand and looks unflinchingly into his ancient eyes as the other slides down his back to pull him smoothly into her. He feels incredible and he groans so helplessly at the feel of her that she floods, body and heart, with a mindless inevitable warmth. She groans too and gives him a meaningful look. "I really missed you," she tells him with playful over emphasis and is rewarded with the full force of his dimpled smile.

They're back on track, his hesitation is passed and he moves inside her. His hands map the curves of her body as he kisses a wet path from the corner of her mouth to her nipple, sucking and nipping with blunt human teeth. The sensations he creates in her are like a double shot of Damon's best whiskey, burning and buzzing all down her throat making her light headed and irrational. She tugs clumsily at his hair until they're face to face again foreheads touching eyes locked as she meets him thrust for thrust, deep and far form gentle but tender still for all the roughness and so completely connected.

By the time they're sated she barely knows her own name, and yet she feels like she's found herself again in the hours they've been together. They made it to a bed eventually, long after they'd actually broken the antique chaise in the drawing room. "Bloody hell" he'd growled. "That was Louis the fifteenth"

She'd laughed at him and flipped him onto his back in the debris. "Oh I plan to break something way older than that"

He'd laughed too. "Is that so? Well come on then love, give it your best shot"


	4. Chapter 4

_She'd laughed at him and flipped him onto his back in the debris. "Oh I plan to break something way older than that"_

 _He'd laughed too. "Is that so? Well come on then love, give it your best shot"_

She'd failed of course, just as she'd known she would, the well of his power is too deep for a baby like her to exhaust but god knows it was fun trying and when he'd carried her exhausted to his bed and laid her down on the soft cotton with his smell all around she'd found she'd had just enough of her own strength left to spoon against him in wiggling invitation.

He'd held her tightly to his chest with one slim powerful arm around her waist and gently fucked the last of her fear away into exhausted oblivion. "Caroline" he'd incanted her name against the damp skin of her shoulder. "My love"

She wakes with the sun approaching its apex and that murmured endearment fresh in her mind. She had thought love was supposed to be epic, Stephan and Elena, falling from the moment they met, fighting the whole world side by side for their destined togetherness.

Elena had shattered her illusions when she'd chosen Damon. When she'd chosen a wild reckless stupid love over that perfect fated one. She'd hated it. Hated Elena just a little for throwing away so easily what she herself had dreamed of since she'd first watched Disney's Cinderella, a prince charming all of her own.

But perhaps the most epic love isn't the one you fight for but the one you can't fight against. She'll admit to herself in this moment, and this moment only, that she loves him. That she is resigned to loving him in a way that doesn't fit at all with her juvenile romantic fantasies but perhaps in a way she's coming to see the merit of. After all if she still can't shake him after everything he's done that's got to mean something.

She watches his sleeping features, enjoying the weight of his arm over her stomach and the warmth of his limbs tangled with her. He's gorgeous; she'll give him that. Maybe not in a GQ cover kind of way; his stubble is a little too scruffy and a good deal too ginger for that, his lips too feminine in their pink fullness. Nose not straight she thinks, while she's listing his faults, kinda weird bumps on his brow.

Her eyes trail over his pale chest, bit skinny in an athletic kind of way. Too much body art. The birds are ok if you like that kind of thing but the big cat is just piss ugly, he must have been drunk.

"Hello love" His voice startles her, blushing, out of inner critique of his looks. His eyes open and his imperfections twinkle into assets. His full lips are exquisitely kissable, his slight frame a perfect fit for her slender figure and she think she could trace the flight of those birds over his pale skin with her lips all day long. Yeah she was right the first time he is gorgeous in every way, but mostly in his dancing eyes.

"Hello" she replies dumbly the way lovers do just to be talking to each other. Then she ducks her head and snuggles in close. She feels alive, connected to herself. She'd thought to keep herself she'd had to hold tight, turns out she'd had to let go.

She's not ready to let reality in just yet. She feels like they're children hiding in a tree house on a summer afternoon, lost in fantasy and imagination. She feels light and free and only in the corner of her mind does she acknowledge that this feeling is temporary.

A long road lies ahead of her, she'll have to come to terms with what she's done and what she's lost and it's going to suck beyond the telling of it she knows that. She'll need her friends if she's to survive it and she thinks she'll be able to let them in now. Now that he has shown her that she is still Caroline Forbes, still the strong, jealous, forgiving, loving girl she always was, the girl they love.

She wants to tell him thank you but how do you even begin to word that sort of ethereal gratitude. He hasn't saved her and he won't fix her, only she can do that for herself, but he's set her on the path and for that she needs to find a way to thank him.

Her body comes alive with the temptation of thanking him in the oldest way a woman can thank a man and she runs her foot invitingly up the back of his calf and all the way up until her thigh hooks over his hip. Her hands delve into his already sweetly tousled hair and her eyes sparkle with cheeky invitation.

"Mr Mikaelson" she says formally. "I don't believe I've properly thanked you for your hospitality."

His lips twitch and he picks up the game. So much endured, so much blood split and still so playful. "My lady it was my honour to offer you the shelter of my humble home. I would not see a lady turned on to the streets for I have heard dark tales of monsters that roam the night and feed on human blood"

She widens her eyes comically and gasps. "I should be so afraid" she hams it up and fake swoons back onto the bed. "Whoever shall protect me?"

With a flash of his hybrid speed he's above her and he's not playing anymore, his eyes are dark and intense. "I will always protect you Caroline," he tells her earnestly, his eyes burning into hers and scorching his absolute seriousness onto her brain.

His declaration makes her shake. It's impossible and it's inevitable and above all it's true and that terrifies her. She can't allow herself to melt into his protection, she's not ready and she has to find her own way. So she scoffs and rolls her eyes and doesn't look to see the disappointment flash in his.

She lifts her head off the pillow to press her lips to his and he kisses her back light and feathery so she has to chase his lips higher and higher to get enough of him until she sitting up and he's on his knees between her legs, head ducked to kiss her, their bodies excruciatingly distant.

She knows what he's doing, insecure narcissistic prick that he is, he's making her come to him. He feels rejected so now he wants to be in control, well tough she's not about to be part of any stupid sexual power play not when they've been so close, so intimate. Not when his pledge has just made her belly dance with butterflies even if she can't show him that just yet. So she leans back on her elbows and glowers at him. "Seriously?" she asks in an exasperated tone and tells him with her expression that she's on to him and she's not impressed.

For a second his jaw clenches and she sees a spark of that signature anger he carries with him always. It's easy to forget when he's being all sweet and sexy just how much of an arsehole he can be sometimes.

"I mean it Klaus" she looks at him sternly for a long moment then softens deliberately and reaches for him. "Don't ruin this, ok"

One more flash of anger in his eyes and he relents, presses her back onto the mattress and mumbles "Sorry" into her hair.

She giggles softly, "Niklaus Mikaelson apologises? Now I really am afraid"

"Oh I'm quite capable of contrition love," he tells her with rakish smirking charm. "When it suits my nefarious purposes"

"Ooh nefarious" her hands bury in his hair and she undulates her body invitingly under his. "My day just got interesting"

With that he brings her lips down onto hers and her hands begin dance over his chest and shoulders as his reacquaint themselves with the bare skin of her hips and thighs. "Caroline" he murmurs appreciatively into her mouth and she swallows her own name tasting his devotion on her tongue.

One day, she thinks as she loses her mind to his touch, she'll come back. When she's all fixed up and mended, she'll come back like a scorching desert sun to illuminate the darkest corners of his soul and leave no place for his weakness and his wickedness to hide.

He grabs her waist and in one powerful effortless movement flips their position so he's beneath her with her knees are on the pillows and his sinful mouth on her sex, teasing and tasting. Perhaps she'll leave a little bit of wickedness just for herself after all.

Eventually she begs. He takes her close with his fingers and tongue over and over again. He brings her to the edge and denies her until she doesn't know or care if he's playing her. If he's exerting his dominance or making a point he can consider it made. "Please, God, Klaus please" she moans for the umpteenth time, each time more desperate than before. "Just please, I need, oh God"

She swears she feels him smile at her incoherence before he bites down lightly on her clit and curls his fingers inside her. She hisses and grinds herself against him as he sucks her hard and flicks his tongue over her. She falls apart above him. "Jesus" she keens as she feels herself exiting the world for a moment as the force of her orgasm crashes chaotically around her body.

She's still coming as he flips them and pushes into her shuddering pussy. The feel of him stretching her is more than she can bear and when he drives deep into her and grinds against her buzzing clit she shakes her head and tries to squirm away from the intensity of it but he holds her down with on hand on her shoulder and one on her hip and looks into her eyes as he pushes into her with a slow and deep rhythm, kisses her neck and breast and lips and between those kisses tells her on repeat that she is beautiful, powerful, kind. She lays back, closes her eyes and lets him pour his love into her, absorbs it through her skin, and channels it into her embattled heart. She is loved, she hears him say with every touch and kiss, she is loved and she is worthy of love. She could cry but instead she smiles, runs her hands over his back and lets him love her.

….

By the time he's done with her she feels light and drowsy. Warmly cocooned in his image of her.

In a distant part of the compound she hears a voice, a woman's and oddly familiar, singing a lullaby softly. Haley, she thinks, singing to the baby. The cocoon shatters and she's ashamed of how easily she'd come to him for herself when she hadn't been able to come to him for him.

A faint soft cry catches his attention and his face lights with something unassumingly beautiful and tender. He smiles inwardly and she feels terrible. "I tried to come," she blurts out and he frowns his lack of understanding.

"When we heard that your baby died" she clarifies and his frown deepens. "I actually got as far as Charlotte but I wimped out and turned back. I just didn't know what I'd say." She can't look at him she feels so wretched. "I must have brought your number up on my phone like a thousand times but I never hit call, then before we knew it we heard she didn't, you know, die and… I'm sorry"

He tugs her close and kisses her hair. "Don't worry about it love"

"Seriously?" she feels perversely indignant at his easy acceptance of her lack of compassion and pulls away to look at him. "Don't worry about it?"

He shrugs. "I hadn't expected you to come"

"That doesn't make it ok. God! Friends are supposed to be there for you when bad stuff happens, you should have been able to expect me to come"

"Are we friends then?" he asks looking ridiculously hopeful considering he spent the night fucking her six ways from Sunday and the last hour turning her into Jello-Caroline.

She smiles. "I guess." She shrugs a little playfully, trying to forget her own inadequacies. "If we're not I need to have a serious talk with myself about who I'm willing to sleep with. Because that would make this kinda slutty"

"I don't mind slutty" he plays along and kisses her shoulder with no real intent. Then he looks up at her from under his lashes in a boyish bashful way that does things to her heart she can't examine too closely right now. "You wanna meet her?"

She hesitates a second too long and she sees him regret asking and rushes to reassure him that he hasn't said the wrong thing. "I'd love too" She assures him and then by way of explanation for her hesitation. "Do I have to see Haley too though?"

He laughs. "Haley's not so bad"

"If you say so," she retorts cattily, she should leave it but she's never been that kind of girl. "I'll take your word for it that she's grown out of her boyfriend stealing, hybrid killing, were-slut phase"

He chuckles "were-slut?" he asks clearly amused by her bitchiness

"It's a word" she defends. "And it's true. She was pretty much throwing herself at every eligible were-wolf or hybrid in Mystic falls wasn't she?" she gives him an accusing look. "At least Tyler had the decency not to actually sleep with her"

Her tirade, or rather the overt jealousy behind it, pleases him and he raises both eyebrows. "Well I wasn't actually your boyfriend if you recall"

She huffs. "I still don't get what possessed you"

"Half a bottle of whisky and a very low cut blouse" he shrugs and looks at her mischievously. "For all her faults Haley does have an impressive p-"

"Lets go" she cuts him off and leaps out of bed to the sound of his teasing laughter.

…..

Hope is so beautiful. All babies are supposed to be beautiful but she's seen some shockers over the years, one of her mom's friends once brought round a thing that looked a lot like a steamed pudding. But Hope is actually gorgeous, with her dark otherworldly gaze and her mother's soft olive skin.

No matter how much she's despised Haley over the years or how awkward their greeting just was she finds she can turn to the young hybrid with absolute sincerity. "Haley she's lovely, congratulations"

Haley beams. Like all mothers she can forget any personal dislike for someone who is willing to praise her offspring. "Thanks." Haley turns to Klaus. "Jackson just went for lunch and a beer with some of the pack, can you watch her while I go join them, just for an hour"

He nods and Haley transfers Hope into his arms and lays a kiss on her forehead. "She's probably due a nap, if you put her in the pram she'll drop off" she says and he nods again not taking his eyes off his daughter.

"She shouldn't need a bottle, but if she cries, just call me and…"

"Don't fret little wolf" he looks up and cuts Haley off in an affectionate brotherly tone that surprises her. Seems the co-parenting thing is going better than you'd imagine. "Caroline and I will take good care of her"

Haley relaxes and leaves, much to her relief, and she takes a moment to watch the Original cradle his daughter tenderly. "Anyone capable of love" she'd told him once. "Is capable of being saved."

He's all love right now and she realises she doesn't have to be the one to save him. His love for his daughter is huge in the room, dwarfing even his love for her; a love she'd thought was pretty monumental itself. She's more than okay with that, she might be a touch neurotic and decidedly insecure at times but even she understands that kids come first. Especially impossible miracle babies born a thousand years after you've given up the idea of ever being a father.

"May I?" she asks holding out her arms and he looks pleased that she'd want to. She coos girlishly over Hope for a while and avoids looking at Klaus whose gaze feels too warm for comfort. She's still basically a wreck, grieving and guilt-ridden and only just now seeing a speck of light at the end of the tunnel. A light Klaus Mikaelson of all people has shown her, which she supposes means its pretty dam likely to turn out to be a train.

When Hope falls asleep in her pram, she realises with a sinking dread that its time to leave. She has hours of driving ahead of her and classes to attend. Her friends don't even know where she is, they'll want and explanation and that thought makes her sigh loudly.

He reads her mind. "Time to go then love?"

She nods and looks ruefully at him. "Yeah." Another heavy sigh, going home shouldn't feel this dismal. "I guess"

He doesn't ask her to stay, doesn't even move to kiss her goodbye as she stands awkwardly to leave, so she kisses him instead, lightly on the cheek. "Bye"

"Goodbye sweetheart"

She feels like there are things to say, there must be. She came here lost and he found her, she came here desperate and he steadied her, wild and he soothed her. She must have more for him than this. But the words are hiding and she can only search for them for so long before standing silently in front him becomes ridiculous. So she bites her lips and turns to go and he lets her damn him. He just watches her go, doesn't he feel something, want something from her before she walks out of his life?

She keeps thinking he'll call her back but he doesn't, she feels his eyes watch her walk the short endless journey to the door without a word. She turns the handle and glances back at him with a tight smile. He looks so tragically resigned that she suddenly finds her words and wonders why she thought them illusive, she has after all been waiting to tell him this for two years.

"Klaus" he whispers knowing he'll hear. "I intend to be your last too. I just don't know how long it will take"

He smiles then, slow and crooked and guilelessly endearing. Then he nods and tips his head. "I have forever"

She doesn't smile back, she just turns away without another word or look. She doesn't need to linger on this goodbye, they will see each other again soon enough, even if it takes decades, they are immortal and it will be soon enough.

In the car she puts on country music and lets herself go. Sings along loudly and cries at the clichéd sentimentality of it. The journey back to Whitmore is long but she's begun it now and with it the journey back to herself and ultimately back to him. There's no hurry; the wheels are already turning and she has forever too.

Fin

 **So let me know what you thought :-)**


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